Heretofore, halogenated phenol compounds or organotin compounds have frequently been used as active ingredients of industrial antifungal agents. However, in light of the fact that these compounds are strong in acute toxicity as well as in chronic toxicity and also relatively hard to decompose, there is an ever-present fear for a secondary environmental pollution caused by accumulation of said compounds in the antifungal agents containing the same. Accordingly, these compounds have now come to be unadaptable for use as active ingredients in the industrial antifungal agents in future.
On that account, antifungal agents which are higher by far in safety have come to be developed enthusiastically. To mention one example of the development, there are provided such compounds as developed, for example, 2-benzimidazole carbamic acid esters, 2-(4-thiazolyl)benzimidazole, etc. However, as revealed from MIC(aluminum inhibition concentrations) of these benzimidazole compounds against various species of fungi, they are greatly devoid of suitability for use as active ingredients of fungicides to be applied to industrial materials and products which are usually exposed to risk of contamination with a wide variety of species of fungi, though these compounds show their usefulness when used in fungicidal agents for agricultural and horticultural application wherein the contamination of plants with relatively limited species of fungi becomes a problem. For this reason, there has been made an attempt to broaden the fungicidal spectrum or augment fungi resistance of the antifungal agents by combining a plurality of antifungal agents different in kind. However, the fact is that the effect as obtained thereby is usually limited only that of one of the antifungal agents or to one of the expected addition effects at most.